


Preach a Little Gospel

by Missy



Category: Gypsies Tramps and Thieves - Cher (Song)
Genre: Broadway, Chasing dreams, Escaping The Cycle, Family Dynamics, Gen, Happy Ending, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Canon, Triple Drabble, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18950068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: The day before her first Broadway audition, the second narrator speaks to her mother.  They're both evolving in their own ways.





	Preach a Little Gospel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



By the time travelling shows go out of fashion and I try out for my first stage show, my mother’s ready to retire from dancing. “It’s a young woman’s game,” she said. “And I was a born writer, child. It’s time I started spending my time writing. That’s the best advice I have for you – never spend years denying your true calling.”

I would tell her it wasn’t about denial. So much of her life was difficult, painful, and beyond her ability to control. 

But after a lifetime of bad luck, she’s starting to turn things around. The sixties mean change, and the world’s waking up to stories like hers and trying to understand them. She has a job at the mercantile, and she’s aiming on owning it someday. But she’s going to school too, earning a teaching certificate, in case we have to move towns. “The world’s always in search of a new schoolmarm,” she told me, eyes flashing with laughter. I try to help her the same way she helped me, making sure I got my certificates by post, proof that I was smart enough to teach anywhere in the world.

What happened to her, what happened to her mother, wasn’t going to happen to me. 

When I danced that night, I thought of her long dark hair swaying in time with the music, fire lighting up her big, black eyes as she moved in time with the men’s strumming. I won the part and made a promise – I will make her proud. I won’t earn my pay on the whim of men throwing their jewels into my path, but I will certainly take them, should they be inclined to favor me.

My mother may have taught me the value of dignity, but she also taught me the value of a dollar.


End file.
